More About the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

If I may, I'd like to get back to the subject of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame - and what exactly I have against Barclay James Harvest.

As I previously noted, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has always been controversial from the moment of its inception. The arguments against it are many - rock music is too anarchic and anti-establishmentarian to be honored in a museum, a hall of fame is too static and conservative for rock and roll, anyone with platinum album sales can get inducted whether they had any rock and roll credibility or not, and it's just a monument to egomanical music moguls and Jann Wenner.

Granted, all of these arguments have merit. But they tend to treat the idea of a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame even more seriously than the Hall's adherents. Rock and roll is supposed to be fun, and when folks like Joe Queenan and John Strausbaugh start nitpicking at its faults, it takes all the fun out of the idea. Not that there are no flaws in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame - I'll get to that in a moment. But the Hall is mostly a monument to popular culture; no one is going to confuse it with the Metropolitan Museum of Art or anything. And if people like Jann Wenner want to have fun with rock and roll by immortalizing it in a museum, what's so bad about that?

So what is the Hall itself, which is situated on the lakeshore of Cleveland, Ohio, like? Well, I went to see it in September 1996, a year after it opened, and I liked it. I wasn't overwhelmed like I was when I first saw the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building - or, for that matter, the Met - but I liked it. I confess I have a weakness for I.M. Pei's architecture, because I have always thought he's the only architect who can make plate glass interesting. Here he did not disappoint; the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum bears a facade with a triangular grid of glass and steel rising up to the air to convey the idea of looking up a guitar fret. It's sharp, it's bold, and it's offensive to tradition - just like rock itself. Inside, the museum is filled with artifacts like the original handwritten lyrics to classic rock songs, video and audio presentations, rare tickets to an historic Beatles concert or festival (you know, collector's items!), and the hall of fame itself, in which the inductees are honored with high-tech video plaques that fade in and out with each other. This ain't a hall of fame for football or baseball, nor is it like the Hall of Fame For Great Americans, that decrepit collection of busts of dead, mostly white male historic figures at, of all places, a community college in the Bronx. This is a rock and roll hall of fame, dude!

In short, I didn't feel cheated or disappointed. I had driven to Cleveland on Interstate 80 all the way from New Jersey to see it, and when my little vacation in Ohio was over (I also saw the Cleveland Museum of Art and an historic canal village in Coshocton), I didn't regret the trip. That said, though, there are problems with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Like many historical museums, the Hall tends to regard quantity as a substitute for quality. Instead of being content with a few audio presentations, a couple of collectible artifacts, and an on-sight radio broadcasting booth, they have to have a shirt worn by one rock star, a suitcase owned by another rocker, and, inevitably, the costumes worn by all kinds of rock and pop performers. A couple of suits from Elvis and the Beatles would have sufficed, but no, they have to go whole hog and show us the interstellar costumes worn by the original members of Kiss in 1975, which didn't look all that different from the costumes they wore on their 1996 reunion tour. So yes, there was far greater emphasis on paraphenalia than on the music, as if emphasizing the former were the only way to convey the latter in a museum.

Of course, there were plenty of musical instruments on display that had been used by various rockers. Again, this is problematic. A few guitars and a couple of drum kits would have been enough, but they had to feature as many different instruments by famous rockers as possible - including Gene Simmons's famous hatchet-shaped bass. Plus, there are so many different instruments played by famous rock and rollers that sooner or later, they all seem the same as any Stratocaster guitar or Hofner violin bass you'd find in a music store. A Strat played by Eric Clapton hanging on the wall might evoke some kind emotional reaction, but not when it's joined by Strats or Les Pauls played by Jeff Back, Jimmy Page, or, for that matter, Journey's Neal Schon.

While Journey thankfully hasn't been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame - yet - the quality of the inductees has also been called into question. The criteria for induction are that you must have issued your debut record at least 25 years ago and had a profound impact on rock and roll. This got groups like the Rolling Stones in alright, but eventually the criteria were loosened to allow any rock-era pop performer with little rock credibility to get in. Take the Bee Gees, who were inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1997. As Dave Davies of the Kinks said at the time, the Bee Gees are tremendously talented musicians who have written some great songs. But are they rockers? Or are they just pop performers who thrived in an era dominated by rock? And Davies has a point. After all, their earliest hits were immaculately produced ballads like "Words." And, their greatest-selling records were mostly disco. Rock and roll fans have long since decided that disco sucks. What about Billy Joel, inducted in 1999, even though his Tin Pan Alley-based piano tunes betray the fact that he has more in common with Neil Diamond than with Neil Young, while his love for rock fails to translate into an ability to play it, as his 1980 album Glass Houses proved? Or James Taylor, inducted in 2000, despite that fact that he's more of a folk-popster than a rocker? Does he belong in the Hall of Fame? And I'm asking this as someone who likes James Taylor!

It's important to remember that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was not just started by Jann Wenner but also supported by Wenner and his various pop star and record mogul cronies. They have more or less deviated from their original mission to honor rock and roll and have pretty much gone commercial, choosing to honor platinum pop performers who have little or no connection to rock over rockers who never sold a lot of records. And this is why Barclay James Harvest will never be inducted - much to my relief.

Let me explain. Barclay James Harvest was a British psychedelic folk-rock band from the early seventies whose music was lugubrious, tepid, and utterly boring. Take it from someone who's heard them. Though they don't deserve to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the only reason they won't be is because of their lack of success in America. (Although, to be honest, someone could theoretically make the case for BJH's induction, although I have yet to meet anyone who would.) But what about American bands no one's ever heard of, like the MC5, who should be inducted for inspiring punk? And how about all of those early-seventies British rockers who didn't sell very many records here but still excelled musically? What about Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel? Lindisfarne? For that matter, what about Family? This is precisely why I want to see Family inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame one day. It would signal to rock fans and critics that the Hall of Fame is serious about honoring the best music, not just the best selling music. It would show that the folks who run it are serious about preserving the music we rock fans love and cherish. And it would certainly go a long way toward offsetting Britney Spears's inevitable induction in 2024.

Still, there's some reason to hope that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which hasn't yet jumped the shark but may still do so, may develop something resembling integrity. On balance, their inductees for 2004 are a pretty decent group, and the fact that they're honoring the Dells, who began recording in 1956 - and were thus eligible for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame before there even was a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame - shows that Wenner and company are still somewhat respectful of rock's roots.

How does the hall retain its credibility, or something resembling it? Here's what I suggest the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame should do. Honor more forgotten rockers. Honor the MC5 or someone like that. De-induct pop and disco performers. Set up separate halls of fame for MOR pop and disco. You could have a Popular Music Hall of Fame near New York's Brill Building, maybe in the Brill Building (assuming it still stands), and maybe a Disco Hall of Fame in Miami, shaped like a mirror ball. The Bee Gees could be inducted in both halls. Also, lose some of the paraphenalia in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and concentrate more on honoring the spirit of the music. How about, as John Strausbaugh seemed to suggest, some regularly scheduled live performances at the museum from all kinds of bands? How about getting some artifacts that actually convey the spirit of the music? Again, I bring up Family. How about an artifact like one of Family frontman Roger Chapman's smashed tambourines? Or the microphone stand he threw at Bill Graham at the Fillmore East? Now that's rock and roll, dude!

Ugh. I've been here too long. Now I'm taking the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame too seriously! Happy Thanksgiving. Maybe I'll be back tomorrow.